BALTIMORE — Auto industry veteran Joe Jankowski has launched Armada Business Solutions, a company that aims to help measure, manage and improve productivity at dealerships. Armada will assist dealers nationwide in centralizing their accounting, human resources and benefits administration.

The company’s proprietary approach will enable dealership groups to centralize key positions and consolidate certain operations-saving hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. The company can work as either an outside consultant or align itself more fully with an operation.

"In the dealer world, what happens is you talk about sales or service or body shop and everyone understands the personnel requirements. They know how many people they need for each area, based on volume. But no one has taken the time to look at the administrative side of the business," explains Jankowski. "We'll go into a dealership, perform an assessment by asking a handful of focused questions and be able to apply time tested productivity metrics. It's shocking to dealers when they see the results."

The savings are realized by a focus in three key areas: people, processes and technology. Armada will ensure dealerships have the appropriate number of personnel. In addition, Armada has the ability to employ more than 100 fully documented best-practice administrative processes, including a unique value proposition in the employee benefits arena. Armada supports the entire system with proprietary software, which provides daily feedback to management in areas where information is typically presented monthly, if at all.

"It's a matter of aligning the right people with the right processes," said Jankowski. "It's not just a matter of reducing the number of people in accounting, but it is the added value of being able to re-deploy resources into other key areas, such as an IT manager or an HR specialist."

In addition to its consultation services related to accounting centralization and employee benefits, Armada can deploy its productivity software in dealerships. "We are particularly excited about our software. It takes tasks that usually require hours or days to accomplish and reduce them to minutes or seconds. No one has a suite of products like this. It's cutting edge and exciting to see it implemented," Jankowski said.

Armada has also developed unique title management tools that manage the title process from inception to completion. The company's human resources services can be as extensive or limited as desired-giving clients control and flexibility.